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The man, 27, said he and his female friend were hungry and entered the place looking for some food. The man saw the pie display and asked the price of a slice.

The answer: $5, an employee said.

The man, 27, said he and his female friend were hungry, and entered the place looking for some food. The man saw the pie display, and asked the price of a slice. The answer: $5, an employee said.

The man thought the price was awfully high and said so. He didn’t have that much money, he added. Could the employees help him out?

The answer was no. The man said he caught a whiff of mockery. He spotted a $5 bill on a nearby table, swiped it and started to leave, but employees stopped him.

Employees told a similar story. The man walked in, asked the price of a slice, questioned it, and asked for free food. Denied, the man grabbed the bill off the table and tried to walk, but employees and a restaurant patron stopped him and recovered the money.

Officers didn’t see the basis for a robbery charge. They told the man he was under arrest for third-degree theft and booked him into the Pierce County Jail.

March 29: Call it the case of the impatient confession.

It started with a report of a one-car collision near Ohop Lake in East Pierce County. Sheriff’s deputies drove to the 40700 block of Orville Road East and found a 33-year-old woman seated on the bumper of an ambulance, not far from a damaged Subaru teetering on the edge of an embankment.

Paramedics said the woman was alone, uninjured and obviously drunk. One deputy spoke to her.

The woman said she’d just left a party and was heading home.

“Do you know what happened? I almost died. I crashed and I almost went into the lake!”

Had she been drinking?

The woman replied as if the answer was obvious.

“Well yeah!”

Too many drinks to be driving?

“Yeah!”

Yes, she was alone, she said, slurring her words. She added that she was in a lot of trouble. She’d just totaled her grandfather’s car.

Would she take a field sobriety test?

The woman rose unsteadily.

“It’s obvious that I am drunk. Are you going to arrest me?”

Tests first, the deputy said. The woman stumbled through them and failed. The deputy told her she was under arrest.

Hearing her rights being read, the woman grew impatient and started talking. A second deputy told her to be quiet and listen. The woman called the deputy a name and spat in her face.

Hearing her rights being read, the woman grew impatient and started talking. A second deputy told her to be quiet and listen. The woman called the deputy a name and spat in her face.

That was a no-no. The deputies wrestled the woman into a spit hood. The woman apologized and asked to have it removed. The deputies refused and told her she was now under arrest for assault as well as drunken driving.

Two witnesses who had seen the crash said they saw the woman step out of the car holding a beer. She took a big swig and threw it in the lake, they said.

The deputies took the woman to the South Hill precinct for processing and removed the spit hood. The woman called one deputy a stupid lesbian and told the other he must not be from Puyallup, because he was ugly, short and fat.

Later in the day, dispatchers received a call from the Subaru’s owner. He had reported the car as stolen. The woman had lived with him for the past several years as a roommate and unofficial caretaker. He said he never gave her permission to take his car.

The report was duly added to the list. The woman was booked into the Pierce County Jail and charged with drunken driving, third-degree assault and car theft.

March 24: The suspected shoplifter offered an excuse worthy of a politician.

The Tacoma officer, working an afternoon swing shift, drove past South 96th and Steele streets. A man in a strip mall parking lot flagged him down.

The man pointed toward a white minivan, a 1999 Chevrolet Ventura. The officer pulled it over and found three men inside. One wore a pair of sweatpants with a floral pattern.

The men said they had stopped at a nearby convenience store to buy soda, and the man who waved to the officer had rushed out and kicked the van’s mirror. They didn’t know why, they said.

The officer spoke to the man again. He owned a wig shop. He said the men in the van had stolen merchandise, and security video would prove it.

The men in the van said they didn’t know what the store owner was talking about. No one went into the wig shop, they said. They stuck to the story of buying soda.

The men in the van said they didn’t know what the store owner was talking about. No one went into the wig shop, they said. They stuck to the story of buying soda.

The store owner showed the officer security footage. The images showed the man in the floral sweatpants walking past a rack of stocking caps and do-rags. He grabbed a handful of them and walked out as the store manager followed.

Returning to the van, the officer spoke to the man in the floral sweats and told him he was under arrest. The other two men opened a drawer in the van. Six stocking caps sat inside, still in their packaging.

The man in the sweatpants, 27, insisted he hadn’t stolen the hats. He meant to show them to his brother, then come back and pay for them, he said.

Why had he denied entering the store before?

The man said he hadn’t gone in intending to purchase anything, so in his view, he hadn’t “entered” the store. The officer booked him into the Pierce County Jail on suspicion of third-degree theft.